About Us
Stratford Tourism Alliance, operating as Destination Stratford, is Stratford’s official destination marketing organization since 2007.
Vision
As a vibrant, year-round cultural destination, Stratford is globally celebrated for its community-wide capacity to generate collective wellbeing.
Mission
Develop and market Stratford as a globally competitive cultural destination through regenerative, socially responsible tourism that improves quality of life and prosperity throughout our community.
In 2021 and again in 2022, Destination Stratford won the Tourism Resiliency Award for Innovation from the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) for the Lights On Stratford Winter Lights Festival. Destination Stratford also received the 2022 Innovation Award from the Stratford & District Chamber of Commerce. In 2023, Destination Stratford was honoured to receive the provincial Accessible Tourism Award at the 2023 TIAO Tourism Summit.
Managed by skilled and experienced tourism planners directly involved in the Stratford community, the goal of the organization is to strengthen the local economy and enrich the quality of life in the City of Stratford through regenerative tourism.
Destination Stratford 2030 Strategy
Destination Stratford 2023 Year in Review
2022 Year in Review
2021 Year in Review
2020 Year In Review
2020 Annual Report
2019 Annual Report
Lights On Stratford 2023/24 Report
The Art of Hosting
In response to the inspiring potential we see in this community and the mounting crises we see across the planet, we are called to help craft the world we know is possible: a world with more opportunity, more cohesion, more joy, and more thriving for those in the community of Stratford and beyond.
By combining the creative, connective capacity of arts and culture with the transformative power of hosting and being hosted, we believe we can create the conditions for more social, environmental and economic vitality.
This is what we call “the art of hosting.” This is Stratford’s emerging superpower.
This superpower can only be discovered through an unfolding process of shared learning in which many needs and opportunities are addressed over time. And it can only be enacted “by the community, for the community,” with a definition of “community” that includes residents, visitors and the natural environment.
Fortunately, Stratford’s unique cultural history, entrepreneurial spirit, location and size have shaped a community that is adaptable, agile and full of potential.
Within this context, Destination Stratford’s most impactful role will be to create the conditions for a community-wide practice of artful welcome and a collaborative process of generating creative cultural experiences. And our own organizational structure will combine responsibility with flexibility, economic development with community wellbeing, and a destination-wide perspective with a ground-level view.
The tangible result will be an ever-unfolding range of thoughtfully crafted experiences and places across the city, throughout the year, and at the welcoming scale of Stratford.
In these ways, residents and visitors alike will experience the special mix of delight, participation and belonging that results in widely shared stories; and the more those stories are shared, the more bountiful the harvest.
By refocusing the central goal of tourism towards transformative experiences while supporting the community to tend to its needs, express its gifts and discover its potential, Stratford will grow as a source of widespread civic pride and an inspiration to other communities everywhere.
OUR COMMITMENT
In practical, tangible terms, Destination Stratford is committed to:
- An inclusive, collaborative and community-first approach to developing and marketing Stratford as a year-round cultural destination.
- Creating new annual work plans with prioritized destination development and marketing initiatives informed by this Strategic Plan and by community input, and tied to the annual budgets.
- Transitioning our Stratford Tourism Office into a Welcome Centre with continual cultural activations that benefit visitors, residents and local businesses.
- Creating new Sport Tourism and Sport Development opportunities that fit the size, scale and seasonality of Stratford.
- Working in partnership with the City of Stratford and local organizations to collaboratively implement the Municipal Cultural Plan through enabling local arts and culture and supporting placemaking.
- Continuing to host Tourism Advisory Committee meetings each Spring and Fall including specific committees for Accommodation, Culinary, Retail, Sport, and Festival & Events.
- Forming a new Regenerative Tourism Advisory Committee that brings a more diverse community perspective to help determine and shape destination development priorities and indicators.
- Continuing to present reports and fiscal updates to Stratford City Council regularly throughout the year.
- Creating and publicly sharing a refined annual Year-In-Review report that links back to the annual work plan as well as the Strategic Plan to evaluate progress over time.
Destination Stratford Board of Directors
Information about our Board is available at visitstratford.ca/board.
Site Media Credits
Site photo and videos by Terry Manzo, Jeff Wood, Little Big Creative and Black Water Media, unless otherwise noted.